Sometimes a Zig-Zagging trope is a product of overcomplication after it comes into play; anything involving a triple subversion makes the result a zig-zagging use of the trope. Sometimes, a trope is both inverted and played straight at the same time, which is also a Zig-Zagging trope.

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In other words, think of an example of this as any that is too screwy or complex to be one of the other Trope Tropes. As a rule of thumb, if someone cannot describe a use of a trope any better than "played with", it's likely this.

Examples:

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One coupon commercial ran up and down with its entire concept. It opens with a couple talking about a website that helped their relationship, before revealing that it's talking about coupons. Then the guy says that he printed out some coupons to surprise his wife, then cuts to a shot of her jumping on him, at which point it cuts to them being interviewed for the commercial on the couch, with the wife saying "and that's how the twins were born," implying that they really were talking about sex now, then it pans out to show two bags of groceries, leading you to believe that's what they were talking about, at which point the husband says that it's good they can get coupons for diapers, leading back to the idea that it was talking about sex.

Hell, it's not even clear whether the harem is unwanted! On one hand, he doesn't return any of the feelings at the moment, and probably won't for a while. One the other hand, he has become good friends with all the girls and a bunch more who aren't romantically interested in him, and does appreciate how much they are willing to help him. On the other hand, as Haruna and Chisame have pointed out, love triangles rarely work out well, and unless Negi goes for everyone (and there are a lot of them), a whole lot of them are going to be disappointed. On the other hand, this isn't just a straight romantic comedy but also an action/adventure fantasy as well, and Negi would not have gotten nearly as far as he had without all of these other characters backing him up. Zig Zagged Trope indeed...

Durarara!! zig-zags My Horse Is a Motorbike. Celty's steed really is a (reanimated) horse, but to help fit in, she gives it the appearance of a motorcycle, though the illusion isn't complete, as in it still makes horse sounds and casts the shadow of a horse.

Highschool of the Dead does it in episode 11, when Takashi pins Rei to the bed after she confesses her felings for him. When he doesn't go any further, she asks why he's hesitating (i.e. Aren't You Going to Ravish Me?). He tells her it's because he doesn't know how he should feel about it, since he couldn't tell whether she's being sincere or not. After being assured that she is, he accepts and leans down out of frame, soon followed by the sounds of their lovemaking. But they're forced to stop moments later, because Rei hadn't fully recovered from her back injury.

In Kitchen Princess, Sora appears to be a Satellite Love Interest as he seems to fall for Najika off the bat. A side story reveals that he had already run into her and was charmed by her, though she never finds out.Then it turns out he was just ordered to hang out with her so that she could be used in a publicity stunt. However, it was inevitable that he'd develop real feelings for her with all the time he spent with her. Then Sora dies. Not to mention it's also insinuated another reason he wanted to have a relationship with her was so that there would be less chance of his younger brother remembering how their mother died.

Axis Powers Hetalia does this with the Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys trope in it's depiction of France, playing it straight earlier on in the series, but averting it later on. The dub tends to play it straight, though, and England even calls him that in one episode.

Shimoneta goes back and forth with the Did You Just Have Sex? trope during the locker-room scene in chapter 10. Tanukichi mistakes Oboro for a member of Gathered Fabric and wrestles her to the floor, causing his foot to be pressed against her pelvic region. It's at that moment that Tanukichi realizes Oboro is actually a male, but he uses his foot to make certain. Ayame walks in on them and sees Oboro pinned on the floor with Tanukichi holding "her" legs open. Made more incriminating since Oboro is seen blushing while his panties were soaked from having experienced his first orgasm. Ayame doesn't say a word, but clearly thinks she's interrupting, so she bolts back out of the room and slams the door behind her!

The I Banged Your Mom trope is initially averted, by having the antagonist (Point Blank), hide it from Clara, rather than use it as an insult. But by the "Amazing Eighth Wonder Vol.1", he's revealed to be her missing father when he reunites with Athenanote Via time travel. Point Blank is 17, making him the same age as Clara. He then spends 20 years trapped outside of space-time. By the time he escapes, only two years have passed; making him 19 (physically) despite being 37 (chronologically). and spends every night making up for lost time. Despite their efforts to keep it down, Clara inhereted Athena's super senses, so she can still hear them — and she doesn't take it well.

Also done with Virgin Tension. For the majority of the series, Athena's concern was that Clara might have her virginity stolen by pervy male supervillains. It never occurred to her that Clara would choose to give her virginity to them, or that the lucky supervillain would happen to be one of Clara's classmates.

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Does this with The Boxing Episode. The cover of issue 106 is done in the style of a boxing poster promoting a bout between Big Barda and Knockout, but the actual story doesn't involve the sport at all. Punching, on the other hand, is very much present.

Does this with Good Old Fisticuffs. When Huntress and Lady Shiva square off in a fight to the death. Even though she never expects to actually win, Huntress plans to at least injure Shiva by getting close and brawling with her instead of fighting at a proper distance with a refined style. Her logic is that, though Shiva has spent years dueling the most refined and skilled martial artists in the world, Huntress is a street fighter and understands how to get up close and personal in a fight. Huntress does manage a single knockdown on Shiva, but gets beaten into hamburger to do so. Shiva remains unscathed.

Dynamo5 Does this with Asshole Victim. The more we learn about Captain Dynamo/William Warner, one of the world greatest heroes, the more despicable he appears to be. It is revealed in the series that he was a habitual womanizer who cheated on his wife, Maddie Warner, even when it compromised his crime-fighting duties. He also was not above using his shape shifting power to impersonate married women's husbands in order to sleep with them. He had an affair with one of his enemies, a supervillain named Chrysalis, and had a daughter with her named Cynthia, and led a second life to help raise her. The worst thing he did was when he fathered a child with an alien woman that he had met in outer space, after coming to the aid of her malfunctioning starship. When the mother gives him the child because she can't raise him herself, he leaves the infant at a F.L.A.G. research facility, where the child grows up without parents. When one of the scientists bonds with the child and begs Captain Dynamo to free him, Captain Dynamo refuses. However, his wife Maddie Warner and best friend Augie Ford still very much respect his memory and miss him, despite learning about his faults. It is implied that Captain Dynamo/William Warner truly did love his wife Maddie Warner and his best friend Augie Ford and aside from the cheating and womanizing, he took his crime-fighting duties as protector of Tower City seriously.

Fanfic

I Want A Refund, Kuno has forbidden anyone to date Nabiki Tendo. Nabiki invokes an inverted "I'll do anything" offer to any boy that defeats Kuno- secure in the knowledge that he will successfully defeat all the other boys in school (since Ranma isn't fighting). Kuno manages to defeat himself, and what follows is a Triple subversion of the "I'll do anything" trope- maybe even quadruple, or quintuple depending on your perspective.

Kyon: Big Damn Hero does this with Recurring Dreams: Kanae's favorite dream is kissing her sempai at the beach and magically teleporting to a shadowy wooded glade surrounded by bunnies and flowers. The dream isn't psychic or precognitive but events happen so her sempai is in a very similar position to the start of her dream. With Kanae sightly dazed (enough to realize the differences on her usual dream but not enough to realize she's awake, It Makes Sense in Context) she kisses her sempai for the first time, everybody watching.

Heroic Second Wind has a rather peculiar level of heavy subversion in The Matrix Revolutions: After Smith delivers a truly exemplary Straw Nihilist speech, he asks the beaten Neo why the hell he even bothers to keep fighting. Neo stands and says, "Because I choose to." Cue asskicking, trope subversion as Smith rejuvenates and beats Neo to a pulp again, double subversion as Neo gets up again, triple subversion as Smith manages to infect Neo, and finally quadruple subversion as Neo uses his defeat to provide a link between Smith and the computer that created him, allowing it to simply delete him.

The Bad Guy Wins becomes rather a Zig Zagging Trope in Murder on the Orient Express (1974). In the traditional way of viewing murder mysteries the "bad guy" is the committer or committers of the in-film murder, but the murder victim was himself a horrendous monster and mafioso who was killed only because he escaped justice by due process of law for his crimes, and a large part of the story involves the central dilemma caused by Poirot being after the murderer/murderers of a man who so obviously had it coming to him and was clearly the worst guy amongst all the characters of the story ethically. When Poirot figures out whodunnit, he lets the guilty parties literally get away with murder, allowing them to win in the sense of escaping justice even though they've lost in the sense of failing to succeed at their plot of deceiving him — although in a sense they won to begin with just by succeeding at their plot to murder Ratchett at all, which is what they were there for in the first place. If you go by defining the bad guy literally as the most morally degraded character in the story, then Ratchett alternately loses in the sense of ending up a murder victim himself, wins in the sense that his murderer(s) cannot murder him without getting caught, and he loses again in that the murderer(s) get(s) away with it anyhow. And had won long ago at escaping the law itself in the first place to begin with, at which his success technically remains permanent.

Men Don't Cry is thrown into a Tornado when it comes to The Wizard of Oz. The Tin Man can cry, and even does so on several occasions, but is advised against it and it ends negatively for him, as he rusts when it happens. The Cowardly Lion also cries several times out of fear, and while he isn't human, he is genuinely courageous in the sense that when he has a good reason to, he does things even though he is afraid. The meaning of the trope is also challenged a bit when it comes to them; do they count as subversions because they are male characters who cry? Or are they playing it straight due to the negative In-Universe connotations they have for crying?

America Saves the Day zigzags in Pacific Rim. The American Jaeger Gipsy Danger scores the deciding blow, with an American at the helm, but only succeeds with the help of a Japanese co-pilot and with the way cleared by an Australian and a Briton, a multinational operation. But the Chinese and Russian teams are taken out early on.

The Lion King zigzags Amazing Technicolor Wildlife. Most of the animals are naturally-colored, but the male lions are either bright yellow with blood red manes or dark brown with black manes. The I Just Can't Wait to Be King musical number plays this trope straight though.

Literature

Asshole Victim is toyed with in Isaac Asimov's The Naked Sun, where the murder victim qualifies under reasons two (to allow the murderer to be sympathetic) and three (it maximizes the number of possible suspects) . . . because he was the perfect embodiment of the planet's social code ("a good Solarian"), that is, an anti-social a-hole. Everyone had a motive to murder the man who reminded them all of their imperfections, and in the end Elijah Baley decides to sit on the knowledge of who murdered the victim.

The Mole is played with in the Harry Potter books with Snape. As in, the main characters have thought (and therefore the reader thinks) that he was every single sub-trope of this at some point, until finally he just becomes ambiguous. It was played straight to begin with, then inverted to become the Reverse Mole, then the main characters thought he was a HeelFace Mole who was just duping Dumbledore and can't be trusted, and then the inverse of that, etc, etc. That is, up until The Reveal, where it's established that he's just doing it for LilyPotter.

The entire point of the Tom Holt novel Falling Sideways. The description of the backstory of the major players is revised, revisited and completely contradicted every two or three chapters, and keeping track of all the lies (and trying to fit it into the events of the book) becomes a big brain-hurting exercise. It doesn't help that, at the end, there's still plenty of huge Plot Holes.

The Wheel of Time zigzags Kissing Cousins in one chapter, when Rand is researching his family tree, trying to figure out if he is related to Elayne Trakand, his lover, and receives a lot of confusing and slightly contradictory evidence resulted in the trope going from seemingly played straight, to subverted, to "sort of true." Elayne is indeed Rand's cousin, but only a very distant one. They descend from the same bloodline, but are not close enough to be considered really related.

Except that he doesn't know his mother was actually much more closely related. We think anyway.

They are very distant cousins... who share a half brother, by way of Rand's mom and Elayne's dad.

The Hunger Games zigzags There Can Be Only One: The premise is that the last survivor wins. With only a few competitors left, the Capitol makes an announcement that if the last two survivors are from the same district, they will be co-winners. Katniss and Peeta become the last two survivors, but the Capitol lied, and there will only be one winner after all. They decide to commit double suicide rather than attempt to kill each other, and the Capitol backs down, deciding that having two winners is better than not having any.

In the second book, there's even more play on the trope- Katniss is sure that there can only be one winner this time, but then five of the tributes are rescued from the arena.

Discworld absolutely lives for zig-zagging tropes. Throughout the series and in many different stories, tropes like Sufficiently Analyzed Magic and Anthropomorphic Personification are taken to pieces, reconstructed, subverted, and lampshaded in dozens of different contexts, to the point that the books can arguably be looked at as a kind of massive, meta-analysis of their ideas.

As well as this trope, Monstrous Regiment zigzags Sweet Polly Oliver , when it starts applying to every single character. Except Blouse. Who, when they have to disguise as women, suggests that he be the one who does it, as the "boys" would clearly fail. He does get into the stronghold unhindered, while the regiment are so used to boyish mannerisms at that point that one of them has to lift her skirt in order to prove that she indeed is a girl.

In L. Jagi Lamplight's Prospero's Daughter trilogy, Miranda sees Ferdinard, her New Old Flame, again after centuries, and he actually has an explanation for why (despite Shakespeare) he didn't turn up for their wedding. Except that it's not him. But the person disguised as him is someone else who has a romantic link to her the past. Except that when she brings them up to him, he jeers at the very notion of love between someone of her species and his.

Death by Childbirth: This trope was played straigh with Beatrice's mother, who really did die from childbirth. But it's later subverted with Sofia, who is lucky enough though to survive despite getting ecclampsia.

Friends Are Chosen, Family Aren't: averted with Sofia, who is Beatrice's cousin and one of her best friends, but it's played straight with with her uncle Vilhelm and her other cousin Edvard, who are just evil abusive sociopaths.

The Tragic Bromance is played with in the Malazan Book of the Fallen. Trull Sengar and Ahlrada Ahn share all the trappings of the trope, including deeply respecting and admiring each other and Ahlrada dying in Trull's arms after switching sides in the midst of a battle and begging Trull's forgiveness. Ahlrada is wracked by guilt over Trull's banishment. Except they're not actually friends. They ought to be, both know that and both wish they could be, but Ahlrada is a mole and deathly afraid of being found out and Trull is no good at reading social cues. It's the serie's greatest bromance that never happens, even though from start to finish it plays out as one.

Live Action TV

iCarly with its lack of continuity and Rule of Funny taking precedence does this with a few tropes, but one of the more obvious and repeated tropes Zig Zagged is Shipper on Deck:

Mrs. Benson in the first and second seasons is clearly a Carly/Freddie shipper, going so far as to ask Carly "Why won't you love my son!" In Season 3 she Zig Zagged into an anti-Carly/Freddie shipper, blaming Carly for Freddie getting hit by the truck in iSaved Your Life, for Freddie deciding to move out during iMove Out and basically blaming him for Freddie hitting puberty:

Mrs. Benson: You're the one who got Freddie interested in girls, and ever since then his boy chemistry's been all out of whack.

Sam's actions in iSaved Your Life and iStart A Fan War show that she doesn't seem to mind the idea of Carly and Freddie together as long as it's for the right reasons. Then she Zig Zagged later, when she kisses Freddie in iOMG it's clear she wants Freddie for herself, and any previous acceptance of Carly/Freddie is replaced by her own feelings for Freddie.

As a result of the above actions, Carly appears as a Shipper on Deck in the first iSeddie episode iLose My Mind, cheerleading for Sam and Freddie to get together, asking the audience about it and generally acting extremely happy about the situation. Then in the next episode iDate Sam And Freddie she's Zig Zagged by being caught in the middle of their fights, telling them that they shouldn't be together because they can't sort their own problems out.

Traveller: Planet Ville. A planet does not have to be a planetville. Many planets are large and complex societies and some have mini-sourcebooks about them. On the other hand PCs when travelling through the stars often don't see more than the starport. On the other hand, a whole campaign can be set on a single planet. On the other hand some planets are almost virgin worlds with no more than a small outpost on them, whose population may be that of a small town or even a villiage.

Frontlines: Fuel of War zig zags with Bag of Spilling: Each mission comes in two halves, and you keep all of your gear if you die... But when the second half of the level loads you're suddenly stuck with a regular weapon set and none of the collected gear from the first section.

Jeanne d'Arc actually managed to pull this off with the Doomed by Canon Trope. In real life, Joan of Arc was burned at the stake but in the game, she was previous Not Quite Dead, so her best friend Liane was actually posing as her for a portion of the game. Liane instead was captured and burned at the stake since she had been masquerading as Joan and everyone believed her to be the true Joan. For extra irony, Joan herself appears on the scene moments after.

Portal 2 does this with Boss Arena Idiocy. In the course of a few short minutes, the Final Boss of the game defies it, plays it straight, subverts it, and double subverts it. The subversion is itself set up with a justification earlier in the game: there are elements of the mainframe room that are not under the control of the supervisory AI. This does not, however, prevent it from setting traps.

NetHack has a triple subversion of Useless Useful Spell. The game has an instant death spell (and wand that contains the spell in consumable form) that's Too Awesome to Use against regular enemies. However, the list of things immune to it is "everything that's already dead", which, in the first subversion, does not include all the bosses (it's about half; as an extreme example, two of the three endgame bosses are vulnerable to it, one is immune). However, the most powerful bosses (that are vulnerable to it) will simply respawn, making it much less powerful against them than you'd expect. However, it's still the most effective weapon to use against them anyway...

Fire Emblem Elibe does this to Lamarck Was Right: Played straight with Lou and Ray's magical ability (inherited from Nino), Eliwood's and Hector's ability to wield Durandal and Armads, respectively; inverted with Zephiel's (and nobody else's) ability to wield Eckesachs; subverted with Hector's and Lyn's inability to wield Durandal in Rekka no Ken and with everybody's (if they have the appropriate skill in swords) ability to wield Durandal in Fuuin no Tsurugi. Also subverted with Lilina's magical ability, as neither Hector nor his wife were able to use magic.

Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories pulls this off right at the very beginning, and relating to the game's major plot-twist. In order to lift a curse cast on their world, the heroes try a magic spell to summon the demon responsible, Overlord Zenon, but it was seemingly botched, and they instead get Zenon's spoiled daughter, Rozalin. Then comes the major twist, revealed at the end of the game, that Rozalin is Zenon as a Reincarnation, and her father (who isn't even biologically related to her) is just a poser who took on the name just to spite her. The heroes did succeed in summoning Zenon after all; however, it was still the Fake Zenon that they were after, since he's the one who cast the curse, so in a way the summoning ritual still failed.

Webcomics

Look under "Fan-Preferred Couple" for El Goonish Shive. The trope is set up when an alternate love interest for Elliott is introduced in the form of Nanase, subverted when they turn out to actually be a couple, double subverted when she breaks it off because there's no spark, and then triple subverted when Ellen/Nanase becomes canon. Triple-subversions are extremely hard to do, but the trope isn't being subverted as much as being a straight playing of Will They or Won't They?.

This is done with Long-Lost Relative in regards to Susan and Diane's relationship to each other.

This comes close to quadruple-subversion level, though only time will tell: Reynardine is now under Annie's control, and as Annie learns more and more about him, he appears to be far more sympathetic and far less the demon that Eglamore believed.

Probably already counts as a quadruple subversion, after in #109 Eglamore requested to turn Reynardine over and Antimony refused and offered a good rebuff, so the situation essentially turned into "the Fair Maiden saves the [ex-] Dragon from the Knight".

Tom zigzagged the Ship Tease in chapter 34 where it looks like Annie and Jack flirt with each other well, in contrast to their previous awkward interaction in chapter 31. They have an apparently sweet moment in a balcony, which leads to her saying she doesn't like him when it looks like they're about to kiss. Then he sighs in relief and declares a crush on Zimmy. She gets pissed off, and he gives her "The Reason You Suck" Speech. He then cracks a joke, and she agrees with the joke and concedes to his calling her out. It finally ends in a relatively sweet moment which leads her to offering him an actual kiss. He turns her down gently and they're shown hugging at the end.

Randomly point a finger, with eyes closed, somewhere on the Fate and Prophecy Tropes page, and you're likely to find something in Digger that's addressed in this manner.

In Nedroid, the initial comics had a lot of artistic experimentation, with some comics looking sketchy while others looked gorgeous. As time went on, the comic eventually focused on a simple, but polished art style. It's two cases of Art Evolution while simultaneously being two cases of Art Decay.

Jack zigzags Parental Abandonment with Fnar, an innocent unborn, who has two dead parents - both reside in Hell like he does. He is mainly kept away from them, since Mama's stuck in a dangerous place, and Papa is just dangerous. Later on the trope gets twisted further: Papa finds him and to some degree abuses him as a means to get to his de facto guardian, after which Fnar is separated from both Mama and Papa as he is given another chance at life. Except that not all so, because Papa is a Sin and able to visit the world of the living...

Subversion 1: Quentyn is careful what he wishes for, very carefully wording his wishes so that his Fae Lord enemy has no loopholes to wiggle through.

Subversion 2: Later, he convinces himself that he wished for the wrong things—that he should have used them to bring back the artifacts he's looking for.

Subversion 3: He's told that his wishes were the most damaging things he could possibly have asked a Fae Lord for All debts and favors cancelled, everything stolen returned to the duchy, and barred from hunting the world again—and what he thought he should have wished for would not have worked as he thought.

And before all this mess, Ralph plays it completely straight when Rahan wishes he could get a good look at Quentyn's face when their booby trap involving tar and feathers springs. After Squidge spooks them, causing the whole prank to epically backfire, he gets his wish—he sees Quentyn busting a gut at him. It comes complete with Lampshade.

Aladdin: The Series has a female genie called Eden, who is also benevolent. Unlike Genie however, she's wise enough to become a Literal Genie when dealing with Jerk Ass Abis Mal. When the villain wishes Genie imprisoned in the bottom of the ocean, she gives him an escape hatch because Mal didn't say forever. When Mal wished to become the biggest and strongest being in the world, she included a method of relieving him of his power; and when the little girl who finds her wishes for everything to be all right, she turns Abis Mal into a bug as a "freebie". She also went out of her way to encourage the little homeless girl to come up with better wishes; when the girl wished for a sandwich, she convinced her to wish for a lifetime supply of food instead.

One episode of American Dad! features a new guy in the neighborhood; one Stan instantly recognizes as an ex-KGB agent, one of their top guys in fact, with who he had several previous run-ins. He's convinced that the agent is here to destroy America, but everything points to him just wanting to live a good life post-USSR-breakup. Several pieces of seemingly damning evidence are piled up, but then they're all reasonably explained away. It seems for the entire first half of the show, Stan is just being put up as a bigot who can't let go of old rivalries; then it turns out the KGB agent actually is there for nefarious purposes, not to destroy America (in fact he does kind of like it here) but specifically to turn Stan's son Steve into a Communist as revenge against Stan. Even after admitting it to his face, Stan still can't get others to believe him for a while due to his previous paranoia.

Men in Black plays with the What Measure Is a Non-Cute? to a somewhat confusing degree in "The Buzzard Syndrome": An alien comes to Earth hunting another alien, so it's Space Policeman hunting Dangerous Killer. Then the lies are exposed, and it seems to be Heartless Bounty Hunter hunting Cute Alien. Then it turns out that the cute alien is a killer, so it's Heartless Bounty Hunter hunting Cute Dangerous Killer. Bit hard to keep track of the lies.

The unofficial porn short goes back and forth with the Interrupted Intimacy trope by having Rat capture Lacey Shadows and turn her over to his boss, Baron Vain. But instead of getting rid of her, Vain becomes horny. Lacey attempts to free herself, until Vain starts to perform oral sex on her, which is when Rat interrupts hoping to get a compliment from Vain. It backfires, annoying Vain and Lacey who was just starting to get into it. So Vain decks Rat unconscious then proceeds to screw Lacey to both their hearts' content.

The short also does the same with Attempted Rape by making it seem that Lacey would have a chance to escape, thanks to Rat distracting Vain. Except Lacey had become horny, despite her earlier protests, and was now more than willing. So once Vain decks Rat, Lacey takes the initiative and asks Vain if he's ready to reesume from where they left off. He replies by screwing her for the remainder of the short.

A Triple Subversion occurs in the episode "Bart Gets An Elephant." Two men are carrying a large pane of glass across a street. Out of nowhere, Stampy the elephant comes charging down the street, only for the men to move out of the way. Then Bart comes racing down the street on his skateboard in pursuit; the men move out of the way again. This leaves them free to continue carrying the pane of glass across the street, where they promptly toss it into a garbage bin, shattering it.

Futurama triple subverts A Fool and His New Money Are Soon Parted. Zoidberg bets all his money on a roulette game, and actually wins. He then is compelled to repeat this, and lightning manages to strike twice. Naturally, he does this a third time. Guess what happens.

Wander over Yonder does this to the Batman Can Breathe in Space trope. How well characters fare in outer space range from nearly dying to doing perfectly fine despite there being no atmosphere. It really all depends upon what best suits the plot at the moment.

Does this with the Aloof Big Sister trope. Summer goes back and forth on this. Earlier on, she was much closer to being actually aloof and uncaring about Morty. But as the show went on, she's become closer to Morty and cares about him, even if she doesn't always show it.

Does this with the Big Sister Bully trope. Summer doesn't actively pick on Morty, mostly because neither one speaks to each other. At one point she groin kicks him for what at first seems like a very flippant reason— but it turns out she thought he went in her room. It still appears to be an overreaction ... until it is revealed a minute later in the episode that Morty masturbates in EVERY room in the house. Even so, they do care for each other.

Does this with the Determinator trope. Nothing stops Rick once he sets his mind to it...unless he just stops caring.

Does this with the Cyborg trope. According to "The Whirly Dirly Conspiracy", Rick's body (or at least the body he currently has) contains a lot of advanced cybernetics. It's never said whether his original body was this, though it'd admittedly explain a lot of his unnatural strength. "Rest and Ricklaxation" resulted in Rick's body being killed off by Toxic Rick, but his quick thinking allowed him to grow a new body out of Toxic Rick himself, which brought him back to full human, but then he gets his right arm ripped off in "The ABCs of Beth", but has a replacement robotic arm ready to immediately replace it. Within the same episode, he's already grown back his organic arm.

Does that with the Lack of Empathy trope. Rick Sanchez empathy is always questionable, but never abundant even at the best of times. If you aren't his family, Birdperson, Squanchy, Unity, Mr. Poopybutthole or a select few other characters, he likely doesn't regard you in any meaningful way. But even to those characters, mainly his family, Rick has been known to treat them poorly, or with indifference. While it is rarely outright stated, the implied reason for Rick's lack of empathy is the horrible things he has seen on his adventures and his realization that every decision they make is ultimately meaningless in the grand scheme of the multiverse (although, it's implied that he's simply using that as an excuse to justify his actions). Also, Rick doesn't see it as worth the effort to bond with any particular version of his family, since they can be interchanged with any other of the infinite versions of them that exist just one portal-gun trip away. Though he seems to love his family, he still views them as interchangeable.

Star Wars Rebels Does this with the Would Not Shoot a Civilian trope. In Alexsandr Kallus eyes, you're not a civilian if you're a rebel sympathizer in any shape or form, which includes being helped by the rebels rather than you helping them. He has no problem arresting the citizens of Tarkintown and burning it down or starving a planet to lure rebels into a trap. However, "Steps Into Shadow" has Kallus comment disapprovingly that more civilians than rebels were killed in Thrawn's victory at the Battle of Batonn.

Real Life

In the days of William Shakespeare, all roles in a theater play were played by men or boys. This includes the female roles, so you had guys dressing up as girls, so you get Dude Looks Like a Lady. Which makes for a very interesting time when this guy is playing Rosalind from As You Like It, Portia from The Merchant of Venice, Julia from Two Gentlemen of Verona, or Viola from Twelfth Night. All are female roles, but the females disguise themselves as males in their respective plays, producing the reverse trope, Bifauxnen. So you end up with a guy playing as a girl that's pretending to be a guy: a crossdressing double-cross, one could say. But when a boy played Rosalind, he would take it one step further still - as a boy playing a woman, who disguises herself as a man, who pretends to be herself for her love interest to pretend to court her. The final speech of the play essentially lampshades the whole thing.

This newspaper article suggests that a political sex-scandal is going through this. In brief, Gay male mayor, possibly underage male intern. On the one hand, Gay Man Child Predator is a very old and damaging trope, on the other hand Hot for Student suggests that we don't think of a young male was 'taken advantage of' but maybe even 'got lucky'. By contrast, old guy - young girl is seen as more 'appreciable' but much more often 'predatory'. Furthermore, gay men are 'expected' to be secretive about their sex lives for some because of privacy, for some because of leeway for a frowned-upon sexuality, and for some because of Brain Bleach.

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